In the past 20 years, the worldwide prevalence of obesity has more than doubled. In 2008, more than 1.4 billion adults were overweight. (1) Using the definition of obesity as a body mass index (BMI) greater than or equal to 30, over 200 million of these men and nearly 300 million of these women were defined as obese (1). The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey revealed that more than one-third of adult Americans were obese in 2009-2010. (2) It is projected that obesity prevalence rates for the United States will be more than 40% by 2025. (3) Obesity is a chronic disease associated with significant morbidity, and has substantial healthcare implications, due to increased risk for diseases including hypertension, diabetes, stroke, inflammation disorders and certain cancers (3;4). Overweight and obesity rank as the fifth leading risk for death globally. (1) At least 2.8 million adults worldwide die each year in part due to being overweight or obese. (1) These data demonstrate the major public health challenge of obesity.
The standard treatment for obesity is diet, exercise and behavior modification. More than two-thirds of adults in the United States are either trying to lose weight or to maintain their weight. However, only 20 percent are both eating fewer calories and engaging in at least 150 minutes of physical activity per week. (5) Therefore, lifestyle modification approaches have had low success rates and frequent relapses. Drug therapy has been utilized as an additional treatment component, although issues of efficacy and safety limit utilization. Current pharmacotherapies include orlistat and lorcaserin, as well as a number of sympathomimetic and antiepileptic drugs. The choice of anti-obesity drugs is often guided by the comorbidities and relative contraindications of the individual patient. Bariatric surgery is an appropriate option for a specific subset of patients, although this may result in serious complications. Due to the adverse effects of the prescription drugs for obesity and the potential complications of bariatric surgery, (6) there is increasing interest in herbal medications for weight loss. Over the counter dietary supplements are widely used by individuals attempting to lose weight, but evidence supporting their efficacy is lacking. As reviewed by Manore in 2012, (7) most dietary supplements only resulted in less than 2 kilogram (2-3%) weight loss in adults. Certain imported dietary supplements have been found to be adulterated with prescription drugs, including amphetamines, benzodiazepines, and fluoxetine, which has led to an FDA warning against their use. (8)
Weight Loss tea 1 (“WL-1”) is a 6-herb formulation, composed of traditional Chinese Medicines (TCM) used for weight loss in TCM practice. (9) All medicinal herbs in this formula have been documented to be safe and reported to have clinical effects on obesity (9;10). However, evidence based studies of reputed weight loss effects are lacking Rodent models of high-fat-diet (HFD) induced obesity are important research tools that provide a window into disease pathogenesis and useful preclinical models for obesity treatment. (11) We evaluated the safety and efficacy of WL-1 in a mouse model of HFD induced obesity. The effects of WL-1 on body weight, food consumption, epididymal fat tissue weights and PPARγ and FABP4 gene expression, and serum glucose and cholesterol levels were determined.